During the last sufferings of King James, the marriage treaty with France was still diligently carried on, through the agency of Lord Carlisle, ambassador at Paris, and was only delayed on the ground that "it could not be suitable with the good nature of a son, in so dangerous a state of his father’s health, to entertain such jollity and triumph as duly belong to so acceptable a marriage." The Duke of Buckingham, who had entertained some notion of going in person to Paris, and of concluding the treaty himself, directed Lord Carlisle, in a letter written on the fifteenth of March, “to have his eyes open, and to state any course, as much as he could, which might hinder the business of the Palatinate and of the religion,” until he appeared in the French capital. But the increasing illness of his royal master delayed the Duke’s journey from day to day; and James was not permitted to witness the conclusion of the long-cherished hopes of the union of his son with a Princess of birth equal to his own. “All human things,” wrote Conway, “have something of earth and defect.” Nothing, he added in his letter to Lord Carlisle,[151] could exceed the contentment of the “excellent Prince and gracious Duke,” at the sure progress of the treaty, "and there was now no speech but of the speed of the Duke’s going;"[152] but in the next letter the journey was spoken of as conditional upon the restoration of His Majesty to health. On the twenty-fourth of March, the tenth night of the King’s fever arrived. The attack, as the same correspondent informed Lord Carlisle, “exercised much violence upon a weak body, which being so much reverenced, and loved with so much cause as His Majesty hath given, struck much sense and fear into the hearts of his servants that looked upon him.” The King, it appeared, nevertheless, had that day slept well, “and taken broths.” “And more to your comfort,” added the secretary, “did, with life and cheerfulness, receive the sacrament in the presence of the Prince and Duke, and many others, and admitted many to take it with him; and in the action and the circumstances of it, did deliver himself so answerable to his writings and his wise and pious professions, and did justly produce much tears between comfort and grief; and now this day, and now this night, he recovers temper and gets, in appearance to us, strength, appetite, and digestion, which gives us great hope of his amendment, grounded not only upon desire, but upon the method of judicious observation.”[153] Footnote 151: Dated March 16, from Theobald’s. Footnote 152: Ibid, 563. Footnote 153: Letter of Conway to Lord Carlisle; dated March 16, from Theobald’s, 566.